CHAPTER XV
THE SUDDEN PERIL
"Oh! he's gone!"
Bob uttered these words one morning just after daybreak. Being the first to awaken, he had thought to start the fire so that his mother might prepare an early breakfast, since all of them were so full of business.
For he and Sandy had planned to go into the woods that day, hoping to secure a deer, since the stock of provisions was growing low.
"What ails you, Bob?" grunted Sandy, as he sat up on his blanket and dug his knuckles into a pair of heavy eyes.
"Blue Jacket—he's disappeared!" exclaimed the other, still looking as though he could not just grasp the fact that was so apparent.
Whereupon Sandy sprang up and stared at the corner where the wounded Indian had been accustomed to lying. The blanket was there, but no Blue Jacket!
"What can have happened to him, Bob?" exclaimed the younger boy, staring at his brother. "You don't think that ugly Anthony Brady did it? Oh! he surely could not have dragged him away to do him harm?"
"Well, hardly," said the wiser Bob, with a negative shake of the head; "because you see, Sandy, I was sleeping not five feet away from him all night, and you know I am not a hard sleeper. They couldn't have dragged him away and I not know it."